It's time for leaner, more efficient IT operations

Companies can no longer complain about the costs of maintaining their IT, security and compliance infrastructure. Security and compliance practices are capable of being much more efficient with the help of new innovations.

Most companies actually require only a small IT operational team, and can greatly reduce the costs associated with ensuring compliance and security.

It's a shame that your security team is preoccupied solving small problems, because there are much more important projects they could be dealing with.

With the rise of bring-your-own-device (BYOD) causing data loss, the threats associated with even attempting to maintain a traditional security apparatus have been called into question.

On the one hand, companies are faced with a wave of outside attacks. Malware continues to sneak past outdated anti-virus software, and the increase in mobile devices used for work means that a great deal of business is being done more frequently on unsecured networks.

On the other hand, IT has been caught off guard by the insider majority of data breaches. It turns out employees actually take most of the data out of organizations, much more than hackers. Despite the increase in outside attacks on companies, Verizon reports some 69 percent of all data loss still originates within the organization. This isn't surprising given the huge number of new endpoints for critical data.

Security teams are already overwhelmed with current challenges and don't need take on a greater security burden to protect data. Innovation has made it easier to improve deliverability for documents and data, without going to security every time these processes need to be secured.

New security automation technologies empower IT operations to make daily security decisions without involving a security team. These technologies allow a user to apply permissions, manage and track documents, and even automate alerts so they will be alerted when critical data leaves their front door.

Beyond company walls, document security solutions can track the movement of important documents, providing complete reports on document location and usage history that are easily searchable.

With these solutions now available, manual security tasks like computer configuration and manual security testing shouldn't be taking up more of your companies time, but less as technology gives operations the power to secure as it is distributed.

Compliance can now be automated. Most enterprises experience the pressure to maintain some industry standards, be it Payment Card Industry Standards (PCI), the Federal Desktop Core Configuration (FDCC) or others.

But why are companies killing themselves to adhere to these regulations, when automation technologies can greatly reduce the burden?

Take desktop configuration management for example. Until recently, the only way to bridge the gap between security, compliance and desktop configuration management was to do so manually. Now solutions exist that automate desktop configuration. This greatly reduces the need for security resources.

By automating compliance and company policies: not only do you save money by removing manual tasks, you also improve compliance by controlling data drift. By controlling data, you will get a better understanding how this data moves through your organization. This makes audit reporting easy.

There is a great deal of overlap here with security, and thats the idea. Companies need to break down the walls between different IT functions. IT operations can now aid in compliance and security functions by employing software that executes functions defined by these teams.

Security and compliance automation technologies allow a single team member to be more effective, and have more levers of control. That means fewer barriers to getting things done.

Stop wasting IT resources on routine security tasks like permissions management, configuration and compliance. These tasks can be done faster by employing technologies that automatically track usage histories on documents, and directly encrypt files.

The fact is, IT should be focused on the huge number of threats out there that only the security team is prepared to handle. Analyzing vulnerabilities and managing network infrastructure fall into this bucket.

Take stock of your company's security requirements, see what aspects of your security might be automated, and kill processes that cannot. The critical tasks still remaining belong to your dedicated security staff.